Pandemic-related school closures, which caused an alarming rate of learning loss among the country’s most vulnerable students, have prompted some administrators to reconsider the school calendar.An earlier start date, a later end date and numerous, elongated breaks throughout the year could allow more timely remediation for children in need — and enrichment for those who are not.
New York City’s new schools chancellor David Banks, has proposed that children in the nation’s largest district report to class on Saturday and during the summer. In neighboring Connecticut, Hartford Public Schools have already started opening several buildings on Saturdays, offering some 800 students who have fallen behind a chance to accelerate their learning.
Such thinking has received at least tacit support from U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona. “Why do we go back to the same system that gives kids two months without engagement in the summer?” he asked in November. “We need to rethink that.”new report finds challenges associated with student learning loss top the list of pandemic-era stressors experienced by teachers in New Orleans, whose levels of depression, anxiety and PTSD rival or exceed those of health care workers. According to a survey administered by the Trauma-Informed Schools Learning Collaborative, a feeling of being ineffective with students — reported by white teachers more often than their Black colleagues — was the top stressor, followed closely by challenges related to hybrid and remote instruction. A joint endeavor of Tulane University, NOLA Public Schools, the New Orleans Health Department and a number of social service agencies, the coalition conducted the survey in June 2021, before first the Delta variant and now Omicron dashed hopes that schools might return to “normal” this year. Beth Hawkins has five top takeaways from the research.
Exclusive: Pittsburgh Schools Reported Zero Student Arrests While Court Records Show It’s a Discipline ‘Hot Spot’
School Discipline: Federal data show that no Pittsburgh students were arrested during the 2017-18 school year — certainly something worthy of celebration, if only it were true. Instead, a report released this month by the ACLU of Pennsylvania found that Allegheny County — and Pittsburgh in particular — is a student discipline “hot spot.” While the district said its underreporting was done in error, an analysis of county juvenile court data show that police carried out nearly 500 school-based arrests in Pittsburgh Public Schools that year. Those arrests disproportionately targeted Black students and children with disabilities, often for minor offenses. During the 2018-19 school year in Allegheny County, Black students were arrested nearly nine times more often than their white classmates, according to juvenile court records. That year, 1 in 51 Black boys and 1 in 69 Black girls were arrested at school, compared with 1 in 316 white boys and 1 in 894 white girls. Outside southwest Pennsylvania, federal education data suggest the issue of underreporting student arrests is also widespread. More than 60 percent of large school districts nationwide reported zero school-related arrests during the 2015-16 year, according to a 2020 report by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles. “The harms of having police in schools are much more widespread than districts report,” the ACLU’s Harold Jordan said. Read more by The 74’s Mark Keierleber.
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